Infections of immigrants.

DISEASES carried by immigrants to this country from the Tropics include infections-viral, bacterial, protozoal and helminthic. Of these infections, some are transmissible and constitute a public health menace, some have only a very low degree of infectivity and give rise to little anxiety and some are innocuous under conditions which obtain in the United Kingdom. Smallpox is an example of the first group, leprosy of the second and ancylostomiasis of the third. While many such infections are ubiquitous in the Tropics, others have a strictly regional endemicity, some knowledge of which is essential to practitioners in this country. This point has been emphasised by Maegraith (1963) in a striking article entitled "Unde Venis?" (Whence have you come?).